Thursday, May 22, 2014

Trapeze

I finished reading Simon Mawer's Trapeze last night. It could not be more different from Mendel's Dwarf, which I also enjoyed (you wouldn't think that a novel about the origins of genetics could be that compelling, but you'd be wrong). Trapeze is about Marian Sutro, a young British woman who grew up in French-speaking Geneva, Switzerland. She is recruited by the World War II equivalent of MI6. Her mission is to make contact with and try to help a nuclear physicist escape from Nazi-occupied Paris. The writing is beautiful, carefully researched (yes, I can tell) and Marian is a character whom you understand and root for. Some less skillful novelist would cheat the ending, but Mawer doesn't. The story ends just as it must.